Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was sentenced to five months in Israeli prison Tuesday by the Nazareth court.
According to Haaretz Tatour was convicted in May of incitement to violence and supporting anti-occupation organizations based on her social media posts.
Following the sentencing Tatour said she was not surprised. “I expected prison and that’s what happened. I didn’t expect justice. The prosecution was political to begin with because I’m Palestinian because it’s about free speech and I’m imprisoned because I’m Palestinian.”
Tatour 36 a resident of the Galilee village of Reineh near Nazareth was arrested in October 2015 after posting among others a poem titled “Resist my people resist them.”
The indictment included a translation of the poem with the lines: “I will not succumb to the ‘peaceful solution’ / Never lower my flags / Until I evict them from my land.”
“My trial ripped off the masks” Tatour stated in May. “The whole world will hear my story. The whole world will hear what Israel’s democracy is a democracy for Jews only. Only Arabs go to jail. The court said I am convicted of terrorism. If that’s my terrorism I give the world a terrorism of love.”
After three months in detention Tatour had been released to house arrest with an electronic cuff. Four months later she was allowed to leave the house for two hours on weekends if accompanied. She was not allowed to use a mobile phone or internet restrictions which had no precedent her lawyer Gaby Lasky said.
At the time Lasky told Haaretz that it is pathetic to put a poet on trial for a poem she wrote based on an erroneous literal and cultural translation. “In the unfortunate case of Dareen her poem speaks among other things about the Dawabshe family and others who were hurt by Jews. The police officer who translated the poem unprofessionally took things out of context.”
“The trial was designed entirely to intimidate and silence Palestinians in Israel to make them censor themselves for fear of being put on trial and criminalization of poetry” Lasky said. “When the state tries people for poetry that derogates from the cultural richness of all society.”
